Like previous King of Fighter games, Neo Blood revolves around the King of Fighters tournament, held by a mysterious host. At your disposal are twenty-four characters to start with, grouped into six different teams (you will be able to unlock characters later on): The Hero Team, Art of Fighting team, Team Korea, Ikari Team, Fatal Fury Team, and Psycho Soldier Team. Only one new character makes it into Neo Blood, named Moe Habana and representing the Hero team. The other characters are the same tried-and-true personalities, such as Terry, Kyo, and Leona.

Neo Blood is loosely based on the KoF99 system, which included Strikers. You have the ability to choose three characters on your main team, as well as a fourth character called a Striker that acts as a secondary attack. Unfortunately you can’t use these Strikers as regular characters in the game, so their effectiveness is limited to countering your opponent’s attacks or setting up combos. Counter Mode and Armor Mode boost your attacking power and defensive capabilities respectively.

The core of the game is still the same as in previous entries in the series: you have two kick buttons and two punch buttons, and a boatload of special moves and super combos at your disposal. The main problem with the game is that while a lot of the expected combos and setups do work in the game, the Game Boy Advance itself isn’t really up to the task of handling it, especially with the small D-pad. Many of the complex motions for SDM moves are insanely difficult to pull off consistently in battle, nevermind using them as part of combos. To make things easier, you can switch from the traditional four-button layout to a three-button layout, which will map the weak punch and kicks to one button.

Visually, Neo Blood looks a lot like the other King of Fighters games. The sprites look identical, and while the animation has suffered a slight hit, it’s still good for a handheld game. The sprites and character portraits were ripped straight from KOF99, as were the backgrounds. Unfortunately, due to all of the problems that Sammy has had with the release of the game in North America, it doesn’t graphically compare to Capcom’s SFA3 Upper or Sammy’s other fighter, Guilty Gear X Advance.

Neo Blood really falters is in the sound department. With a total of thirty characters in the game once everything is unlocked, it’s obvious that many of the sound effects would be cut because of memory constraints, but it’s still disappointing that the quality isn’t on par with the rest of the game. There are no cool intro quotes, most of the sayings for special moves and super combos are gone, and the background music isn’t too hot either.

Despite its flaws, Neo Blood is still King of Fighters, a series renowned for its classic 2D gameplay. While many of the aesthetic charms that most gamers enjoy aren’t available in this version, the great gameplay has been brought over without too many hiccups, and that’s all that should matter to fans of the series. It might have been a long (long) time coming, but King of Fighters: Neo Blood is an impressive first showing for Marvelous Entertainment.

. . . Reno